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That year 1956-57 a New Women's Dorm had just been built and this was where I lived with three other young women - two freshmen and a junior. There was a common room in the middle of each unit and a bedroom with bunkbeds on either side. It was on an upper floor and windows looked out toward the edge of campus. All three of my roommates were from out of state. Though my parents were well educated, I began to understand how limited my own experiences were coming from a small  rural Oregon community when I learned how many Reedies had been to plays, foreign films, and even opera. Besides being a year older than I, my classmates were culturally ahead of me. My classes included Humanities, Biology, Art History, and Russian language. Humanities was the heart and soul of the Reed liberal arts structure. There were huge reading lists and great leaps through world history. When we couldn't keep up, we read Classics comic books of the great novels, like Les Miserables. In Biology, I had to actually dissect a frog, though not cats (which were in a bin with formaldehyde outside the classroom), in the first year. Art History was taught by a man who was famous for his calligraphy and left notes on my papers in his beautiful handwriting. My favorite class was Russian, because the teacher was very sweet and I found I had a knack for and love of languages that has lasted all these years.
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